Evil eye in the western Highlands

by Robert Craig Maclagan

MOST SUITABLE WATER

In the course of the preceding, various sources for water used to cure Evil Eye have been mentioned. “A certain well.” This may have been a holy well of some sort, consecrated by traditional connection with some saint, though after all it may have been chosen merely to fulfil the condition mentioned elsewhere that a spring is preferable. A narrowing of the choice of springs from which water could be taken was shown in the case where one of our reciters told us that, believing the water a bhiodh air a thoirt a tobar o’n taobh deas (should be taken from a south well), he proceeded to take it from a well south of his own house, while another mentioned that the water required to be taken from a spring facing the south.

While roughly one-half of our reciters have expressed a preference for well or spring water, the other half prefer running water. One said “it should come from a march burn,” and two mentioned “that it should be from a running stream,” not mentioning any advantage to be derived from its dividing two properties. One pointed out that a piece of bread must be in the possession of the taker. In two other instances the information was given that it must be taken where the living and the dead pass. The condition further annexed that it must be from under a bridge is probably merely an expression of the reciter’s own for this same idea. He would probably have considered stepping-stones, or a commonly used ford which led to a burial-place, as equally effective.

The specified qualifications really cover all the usual sources from which water can be drawn. From a native of Kintail, we hear of a case which was considered the result of the Evil Eye, though she spoke of the patient, a boy, having been “injured by some spell.” He was quickly cured by the sprinkling of water from a “certain well.”

An Islay reciter was very clear upon the necessity of choosing “uisge fior” (spring water).

From the same island, in a case where a cow was said to be suffering from “buidseachas” (witchcraft), which in this case seems to mean Evil Eye, the water was taken in a small tub from the Saligo River. The cow recovered, so if there is any doubt in any one’s mind as to a proper source of supply, he can always procure it in the river running from Lochgorm to the west of Islay.

Another reciter said that water would be more efficacious if taken from a point where three parishes touched each other, or failing that, from a spot from which three parishes could be seen, and that he knew of water being frequently taken from a spot which answered these conditions for healing purposes of the sort we are considering. This is again an invocation of the Trinity by suggestion.

A woman who herself practised eolas, when asked whether it mattered what sort of water she used, said “Oh yes, it must be water from a march over which the living and dead pass.” The use of this water need not apparently be accompanied by incantations and other formulæ.

A reliable informant mentioned a case which came under her own notice of a Skye woman living at Kenmore, who, having taken it into her head that a passing tramp had injured her child with the Evil Eye, “hurriedly bundling up her child, went with him to a little river near her house, and washed the boy under the bridge which was on the main road there, and the regular thoroughfare, alike for ordinary passengers and funeral processions.” In fact, a running water over which the living and the dead passed.

For dwellers in towns these instructions, if carried out, might mean considerable trouble, but in one case at any rate, in Campbeltown, Kintyre, a firm believer in the Evil Eye, with a view to her own protection, “used to stand over the water tap in her own kitchen and allow the water to run while she repeated some words over the running water.”

The position of some wells undoubtedly makes them fashionable. One of our informants who has lived at Crianlarich says that within the last thirty years she has known people come considerable distances to take water from a well between the old Priory and the Kirkton burying-ground, over which the “living and the dead” were wont to pass. It was taken for the purpose of curing cattle injured by an Evil Eye. A silver coin was generally in the vessel in which they carried away the water. The efficacy of this cure was commonly, if not universally, believed in by the people of the place.